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By Dan Horn
March 31, 2011 - 10:30
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James Gordon, Jr, that all but forgotten prodigal son of Gotham, has returned, and his reappearance has rekindled an interest that James's father, Commissioner Gordon, had in a cold case involving missing and murdered children.
Snyder is one of those scribes whose plotting is always
breeding this overwhelming anxiety and tension. He's like the Hitchcock of the comic book medium. Take the diner scene in the last issue for instance. The water seeping out from under the door after James, Jr, cracks that inappropriate joke: that was a masterstroke.
Snyder's stories are never presented in a way that condescends to his readers. I never feel as if his material is being dumbed-down for anyone's sake. Metaphorical imagery and motifs abound. This is definitely a comic for the literary habitué, and yet it's completely accessible.
Francesco Francavilla is set loose in this issue. I mean, his splash pages are just fantastic! This is some of the best sequential work I've seen since J.H. Williams III was doing Detective. His use of different palettes to denote chronological order makes everything very fluid and easy to comprehend. It's far too easy to make simple complicated, but Francavilla succeeds in making his complex puzzle of sequential art very uncomplicated.
It's great to once again have a monthly Batman book this well-done. Of course, Batman takes a backseat here, but I can live with that as long as we keep getting more of this awesome storytelling. I can finally stop wishing for that perfect creative team to rejuvenate Detective. They're already here.
Rating: 9.5 /10
